Australia - Telstra: Modern Technologies Help People with DisabilityTelstra, in conjunction with the Telecommunications Journal of Australia (TJA) and the Hon Bill Shorten MP, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services, today launched the Telstra-TJA Christopher Newell Prize for Telecommunications and Disability.From Now we are talking, June 24, 2009

MS Malaysia: Animated PC Solution Will Help Disabled UsersNew animated tutorials to help PC users with disabilities have been launched by Microsoft Malaysia at the 17th Commonwealth Education Ministers' conference in Kuala Lumpur.
Microsoft Asia-Pacific public sector managing director, Mike Donlan said the company's curriculum for accessibility and reach for education (CARE)--an online set of more than 60 animated tutorials and exercises)--would help students with disabilities, and their teachers, use computers more effectively.From Info World, June 18, 2009

Three Disability 'Firsts' in a European Court of Human Rights CaseIn the recent case of Glor v. Switzerland, the European Court of Human Rights has for the first time (1) found a violation of the right to non-discrimination on the basis of the applicant's disability, (2) referred to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and (3) used the human rights concept of "reasonable accommodation".
From Mental Disability Advocacy Center, June 02, 2009

Government of Canada Employment Program for People with Disabilities Benefits T'sou-Ke NationThe T'Sou-ke Nation will provide a band member with disabilities with work experience to develop valuable employment skills thanks in part to Government of Canada support. The Honourable Gary Lunn, Minister of State (Sport) and Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands, made the announcement today on behalf of the Honourable Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development.From Marketwire, June 01, 2009

AOL/TopCoder® Accessibility Developer Competition to Culminate at 2009 TopCoder OpenAOL today announced that the AOL/TopCoder® Sensations Developer Challenge will culminate at the 2009 TopCoder Open (TCO) on Monday, June 1 – Thursday, June 4, 2009 in Las Vegas, NV where the winning accessibility application developed by competition participants will be announced. AOL teamed with TopCoder, Inc., leader in online programming competitions, skills assessment and competitive software development, to encourage third party development of targeted value-add features for the disability community.From WebWire, May 22, 2009

New Accessibility Guidelines Part IV: RobustnessThe fourth principle of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines requires new web documents to be “robust.” Robustness, future-proofing, user-agent independence, accessibility-supported: All are terms that suggest the same basic idea that your documents should follow standard, supported models for web document types. In many ways, this is the simplest and most testable requirement of the WCAG, but the details can be quite complicated.From Practical e-commerce, May 22, 2009

Reading Rights Coalition Denounces Random HouseThe Reading Rights Coalition, representing more than 15 million print-disabled Americans, has denounced publishing giant Random House, which has turned off text-to-speech on all of its e-books available for Amazon's Kindle 2 reading service. From PRWire, May 20, 2009

Assistive Technology: Low Vision Doesn't Mean Low-TechLuxury puts up a good fight, but necessity is still the true mother of invention. Innovations in assistive technology, such as Bluetooth hearing aids and Braille-input PDAs, are helping the physically and mentally disabled and impaired keep pace with our increasingly tech-dependent world--at least, for those who can afford them! Here's a look at some of the latest tech products for people with visual disabilities.From Gearlog, May 19, 2009